Energy consumption of Ethernet compared to automotive bus networks

Ethernet based networks are a promising solution to increasing requirements in bandwidth and the growing complexity of in-vehicle networks. Besides reliability, safety and real-time capability, power consumption is one of the aspects that need to be addressed. In this paper we propose analytic models approximating the power consumption of Ethernet, Energy Efficient Ethernet and automotive network technologies CAN, MOST and FlexRay under consideration of topology and traffic. The results indicate, that Ethernet requires more power than CAN and FlexRay, but less than MOST. However, EEE reduces power consumption to a level comparable to that of FlexRay for current in-vehicle traffic characteristics.